The Imperial Beach City Council will soon move to ban medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits.

The issue will appear in front of the City Council again within the next one to three months for consideration and public comment before approval is sought from the California Coastal Commission, said City Manager Gary Brown.

No dispensaries currently operate in Imperial Beach, but in a City Council meeting last December, Brown suggested the city pursue a ban on the grounds that the presence of dispensaries could result in an increase in crime and patients could still have access through dispensaries in nearby San Diego.

 Local medical marijuana advocate Marcus Boyd first proposed the idea of opening a dispensary in IB in 2008. A moratorium enstated in July 2009 expires Aug. 18.

Boyd said he has no interest in opening a dispensary, and previously had no interest in the subject, but has fought for patient access to the drug since his sister’s death in 2007.

Boyd’s sister Kimberly Clark had multiple strokes, gastrointestinal problems and other illnesses. At first she wasn’t open to the idea of marijuana as medicine but after she began smoking “her quality of life improved dramatically,” Boyd said.

An ulcer landed her back in convalescent care where one night she complained about pains.

“She said ‘if you could just give me a joint, that would be great.’ They laughed,” he said.

“She died the next morning.”

“That’s why I won’t stop,” Boyd said.

Boyd is working with the Stop the Ban SD Campaign and its 23 member organizations to protest the City of San Diego’s effort to further restrict where dispensaries or co-ops can operate. San Diego City Council will vote Monday on new rules that would act as a de facto ban for much of the city of San Diego.

When things wrap up in San Diego next week, said Eugene Davidovic of Americans for Safe Access, “we intend to fully ramp up the Stop the Ban Campaign in Imperial Beach."

“What we want to do is connect the constituents with their representatives 'cause they are not fulfilling the will of the people that live in that city.”

“That’s why that city is first on our list,” he said.

According to an informal poll conducted throughout March by Stop the Ban SD Campaign partner Canvas For A Cause, approximately 80 percent of IB residents are in support of medicinal marijuana.  

The group is still considering what avenue to take but actions could be anywhere from a letter writing campaign to canvassing for signatures to put medical marijuana regulation on the ballot in Imperial Beach in 2012.

“We’re going to see all of these bans get challenged in courts legally and these cities in order to save themselves should just adopt reasonable regulation. cause they lose when they do that.”

A Cannabis Club Conundrum

One solution may have been to allow San Diego County laws to regulate where dispensaries can exist in IB, however, due to current zoning parameters in IB, “the county model did not work,” according to Community Development department director Greg Wade.

San Diego County only allows medical marijuana dispensaries in industrial zones, but IB has no industrial zones.

If IB were to allow dispensaries in commercial zones, they must be “500 feet from any residential zone, and 600 feet from a school, playground, park, church, recreation center, or youth center or 1,000 feet from any other medical marijuana facility,” Wade said.

“There would be no location in the City that would meet these requirements,” said Mayor Jim Janney in a Dec. 15 meeting.

“We’ll have to ban this,” he said.

Councilman Jim King said that to require every municipality to provide access to marijuana dispensaries was a violation of local autonomy. In this case, the equal access required by law exists in the form of “other locations delivering [medicinal marijuana] within 4/10 of a mile,” according to King.

Such access now exists just over the Imperial Beach border in San Diego at Palm Avenue and 16th Street as well as at 25 other dispensaries that deliver throughout San Diego County, Wade said.

Marcus Boyd isn’t so convinced.

The San Diego City Council “has shown that any ordinance that they put forward would essentially ban it in the city of San Diego,” Boyd said.

“For IB to count on the City [of San Diego] would be reckless.”

Reckless or not, when the San Diego City Council authors regulation stating that dispensaries must be located a certain distance from schools, momentum shifts towards further regulation instead of all out ban, according to Hermes.

Such actions “reduce the arguments of our opponents by recognizing that these facilities have a right to operate within the state,” said Hermes.

Regulate, Ban or Institute a Moratorium

As passed by California voters in 1996, Prop. 215 legalizes use, possession and cultivation of marijuana for patients with a valid doctor's recommendation and assigned an ID card. Patients may designate a primary caregiver to possess and cultivate marijuana for medical use.

Opponents from the city of Los Angeles, San Diego and other parts of California often contend that it is a violation of local autonomy to require every municipality provide its citizens access to marijuana in the form of local non-profit dispensaries.

All are considered local non-profit dispensaries under the law.

In May 2010, the California Legislature amended the Compassionate Use Act with AB 2650, limiting marijuana dispensaries to locations in commercial zones, but not within a 600-foot radius of any public or private school serving grades K-12.

According to Kris Hermes with the ASA, California municipalities have responded to the legalization of marijuana for patients in one of three ways:

Institute a moratorium, which 102 municipal governments have done, regulate marijuana with an ordinance, which 42 have done, or a total ban, like half of all cities have done statewide. 

In the case of IB, a two-year moratorium was adopted, which, according to Hermes, is often used “as a delay tactic, with the intention of developing bans.”

The moratorium is authorized by the California Environmental Quality Assessments Act (CEQA), adopted in 1970 to inform government leaders of the environmental effects that could be associated with certain activities, or permits sanctioned by a government agency.

The intentions of CEQA has nothing to do with marijuana dispensaries, according to Hermes. The act requires that municipalities establish a maximum two-year moratorium.

Once the moratorium expires, municipalities must regulate or ban the substance.

Regulations often pertain to land use, Hermes said, zoning or buffer zones around so-called “sensitive areas” such as residential areas, churches and schools, but can also outline requirements for security systems, guards, cameras, background checks and other operational standards that they feel are necessary for dispensaries.

The result, said Hermes, is an “unserved patients and taxpayers.”